I am new to this forum, however I am not new to cooking or food prep. I have worked in the meat industry as a wholesaler and a retailer specialty butcher. I am disappointed about som of the knife articles, mainly because they leave out the most commonly used knife in the industry, the Dexter Russell. I think most of the fancy brand names are over priced and overall no all that good. If your looking for a real knife that stands up to real use try a dexter russell. Most meat paking plants and custom butchers rely on these for the way they keep an edge and the non slip handel. Are these knive fancey looking ...NO but they work really well. http://www.dexter-russell.com If any body out there is interested in givung me feed back I would love to hear it.

I kind of agree with you. Years ago, I took a Chinatown walking tour and ended up buying the Dexter Chinese Cleaver, at the time it cost around $30. Over the years my knife collection has grown. When I got married a Chicago Cutlery chef's Knife and a Henckel's chef knife came along. Then I bought a Dexter Russell 12" Sani-Safe Chef's knife. Later on, working for fun at Williams Sonoma I used my 40% discount to buy a Global chef's knife.

Well, I use my Dexter chef when I am cutting a lot of stuff and need the extra length. I only bring out my Global when I am teaching a cooking class.

For everyday use, it's the Dexter Chinese Cleaver. It does everything my other knives do, but has the advantages of a flat design for scooping, etc.

I take advantage of the free knife sharpening every April at Sur La Table, and use some manual sharpeners the rest of the year.

With my cleaver and my V-slicer I can take care of just about every kitchen function I can think of.

I used a Dexter Russel Sanisafe 10" Chef's Knife at my culinary class and have been nothing but disappointed. It's dull (after 15 minutes of sharpening and stealing), it looks cheap, and I could barely cut a potato with it.

I think the problem with Dexter Russell knives is they make a wide range of qualities.....some of their connoiseur collection especially the forged knives might be very nice, but then you see some really cheap stamped sheet metal knives with the Dexter logo as well.........so people usually connect a logo or name to what they see most.....

I think they could improve their reputation if they discontinued with their budget lines, because let's face it if people really want a budget line their going to go with some import chinese knife anyway....and they have a long history and a good name they could tie to their better knives.

I have MANY years of using Dexters in restaurants/institutional kitchens. My current gig has fairly recent vintage black handle Dexters--which are much better than the always blunt white handle "Sani-Safe" type. Still.....it's not near as good as the Forschner Fibrox. 25 years ago I was cooking at a Holiday Inn. We had the cheap Dexters as house knives. One day the new guy brought in an 8" Rosewood 430-8 Forschner. I liked it so much I went and got my own 10" a few days later. Within a month...pretty much all the cooks had got their own Forschners.

Back then....there was a price gap,the Forschner cost 50% more,however....I found that I could get one VERY sharp,using a double bevel method a lot like Chad Ward describes. I also sharpened to a MUCH steeper angle.

Now? Forschner has the Fibrox handles,virtually the same knife,but now there's NO price advantage to the Dexter.

Dexter DOES make the king of grill Spats,I bought my own and back then it cost as much as my knife.

Dexter won't drop the " cheap stamped" line,that's probably 90% of their knife sales by volume. Dexter has a pretty strong distribution network. Locally,the main Restaurant vendor where places get anything from canned goods to frozen foods to pot scrubbies....can add a dozen Dexters to your order. They used to carry Forschner but,the salesman confessed--they got a better markup on the Dexter's.

As I said above--the CURRENT Dexter line is improved. It's usable. The Forschner stamped Fibrox? You can get a better edge on one of those than ANY Euro Forged Knife that's not $60+. That's if you can use a stone well.

The stamped Forschner actually can get an edge better than their deluxe forged line. The forged has too thick of a blade. The Forschner is closer to a Japanese Mac than a forged Heinkel.